Blender adds support for N-sided polygons

Blender 2.63 has support for N-gons
Source: Blender Foundation

The Blender development team has announced Blender 2.63, the latest stable release of the open source 3D modelling and movie production program. The biggest new feature in this version of Blender is the integration of the new BMesh modelling engine, but there also have been improvements to the render system, the motion tracking and fixes for 150 bugs.

Blender now fully supports N-sided polygons, also known as "N-gons", and the BMesh engine adds new tools such as Dissolve, Inset, Bevel and others. The Knife, Subdivide and Rip tools have also been updated to take advantage of the improved polygon handling. Using N-gons makes modelling in Blender a lot more flexible. Prior to this version, Blender only supported triangles and quads for 3D meshes, a fact that many users lamented since it meant the application was lagging behind several commercial 3D modelling packages.

The program's render system has gained support for panoramic cameras and mirror ball textures in version 2.63, with the motion tacking system also being improved with some bug fixes. Blender's movie editor now supports movie clips in its sequencer and the Linux version has received drag and drop support when working with external applications.

A detailed list of new features in Blender 2.63 can be found in the release notes and the software can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD from the project's download page. The source code for Blender is licensed under the GPLv2 and development is sponsored by the non-profit Blender Foundation.

See also:

• Blender 2.62 gets new UV editing tools, a report from The H.
  

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